When the night was black, and Jill was certain that the people would have left the tavern and gone to their homes to sleep, Jill hurried back across the field of sheep, skirted around the edge of the silent fishing village, and made her way down to her little harbor. The mermaid was singing again. The song seemed to penetrate Jill's soul. It was intoxicating. It was unbearably beautiful.

Come, come, where heartache's never been.

And where you're seen as you want to be seen.

Come, come, the place of shadow and green, Where you'll never cry no more, dear la.s.s, Where you'll never cry no more.

Jill's vision became blurred. She couldn't see the houses of the village, nor the sky above it. All she could see was the black, heaving ocean and the craterous, craggy rocks that rose up around it, like teeth around a great mouth. The mermaid was singing more sweetly and sadly than she ever had before. Jill came to the water's edge. She looked out at the mermaid's rock, surrounded by the spuming, frothing ocean, but the mermaid was not there.

"Here," she heard. Jill looked down. There, directly below Jill, just beneath the surface of the sea, the mermaid floated. Jill bent over and, staring down at the mermaid, it felt like she was staring into a mirror of obsidian, and the mermaid was her beautiful, perfected reflection. If only the mermaid really were Jill's reflection, she thought. If only. She wanted it so badly it made her heart ache.

The mermaid's eyes were wider and blacker and greener than Jill had remembered, and her hair that looked like the shining of the moon on the water at night blew every which way under the waves. And she was smiling at Jill.

"Beautiful girl," she said from under the water. "Beautiful, brave girl. You have done something to defend me, and to avenge my sisters. I can feel it."

Jill sat down on the edge of the rocks. She folded her feet behind her and dangled her fingers in the cold, wild water. "I tried," Jill said. "I tried to."

The mermaid beamed at her. "You beautiful, brave girl. Here," she said, "let me kiss you." And then she was rising up out of the water, her white body shining in the moonlight, her green and black scales shimmering darkly below. She raised her face to Jill's face and brought her foamy lips to Jill's left cheek. Jill felt them brush against her skin, and it was the softest, sweetest feeling she had ever felt. She closed her eyes. Above her, a great black wave rose into the night.

The great wave rose, and then paused.

And then it came crashing down upon the mermaid and little girl. It slammed Jill's body into the sharp rocks. It dragged her, with an irresistible pull, down, down, down. Jill tried kicking, fighting it, but she just sank deeper beneath the waves. She opened her mouth to scream, and water rushed into her lungs. She opened her eyes and they burned from the salt. But she could see. She could see the beautiful mermaid, holding on to her wrists, her face contorted, demented. And behind the mermaid, Jill could see six other mermaids, rushing toward her, their faces twisted, warped. And they sang as their hands grabbed at Jill's arms, Jill's legs, Jill's hair. They sang: Come, come, where heartache's never been.

And where you're seen as you want to be seen.

Come, come, the place of shadow and green, Where you'll never cry no more, dear la.s.s, Where you'll never cry no more.

And finally, Jill saw the body of a little girl, tangled among the seaweed at the rocky bottom of the harbor. The body was pale, and it floated lifelessly, its eyes staring up unseeing toward the surface.

It was a lie. The mermaid had lied.

The last breath left Jill, the last fight died in her arms and legs and lungs. She went limp. The sea grew dark.

And then, falling through the darkling sea, there was a net. It fell and fell, sliding over the mermaids as if they were not there, as if they were no more than beams of the moon. But it fell around Jill and cradled her, and it pulled her up, up, away from the mermaids' grasping hands, up to the surface of the water, up above the obsidian waves and into the moonlight and the freezing, bracing air.

Jill was placed gently on the rocks and the net was opened. She coughed and coughed, seawater pouring out of her mouth. She held herself up with her hands and wretched until every last drop of brine was purged. Then, drained, Jill sat back.

A pair of arms draped themselves over her. Small, thin arms. Jill opened her eyes. She could see only a white bandage. Then she felt amphibian skin on her neck.

She looked up, over the bandage that was nestled under her chin, and saw that the big-bellied man with the red beard was staring at her, shaking his head. He looked like he was crying. "I got ya this time," he whispered, as if to himself. "This time, I got ya."

The bandage pulled back. It was Jack, holding the frog in his hands. Little Jack was smiling tearfully. The red-bearded man approached and picked Jill up, cradling her, with his one good arm, away from the bandaged one, and carried her back toward the tavern. "I told ya," he said to her as he walked, Jack following just a pace behind. "No man can cast such a net as can catch a mermaid. But a mermaid can surely cast such a net as can catch a little girl."

The man with the red beard was all better now. His arm had been in a sling for a few weeks, and each night he removed his bandages and rubbed it with a local whisky. He said that was better than any doctor could do.

His heart was better, too. But he didn't need any whisky for that. The innkeeper told Jill that, for the first time since his daughter had died, the man with the red beard was his old self again. "I got her," you could hear him say to himself. "This time, I got her."

The man treated Jack like a son. Jack, who had watched Jill go down to the little hut, who had seen the man come home from the fishing boats, who had wondered at Jill sprinting away past the inn. Jack had tried running out of the inn after her, but he hadn't seen where she had gone. All that had been left to do was go down to the little hut. He had found the bearded man, unconscious in the shed, still bleeding. "He saved m' life," the bearded man said after they'd told Jill the story. "And yours, too."

The days were fine, there in the little village by the sea, and the people had grown to love Jack and Jill. But the children had to move on, for they were no closer to the Seeing Gla.s.s.

And besides, the mermaid still sang at night, tormenting Jill with her beautiful song.

So the children asked the red-bearded man if he knew where they could find goblins.

The man's face grew dark. "Why would you want to see the goblins? It's an evil race, the goblins are."

"We're looking for a mirror," said Jill. "The Seeing Gla.s.s. It's in the deepest part of the earth."

The man smoothed his red beard with his meaty hand. He shook his head. "If it's the belly of the earth you want-ay, the goblins could show you there. But they're more likely to trap you, and kill you, and sell you for parts."

Jack started, but Jill just set her jaw and said, "Where are they?"

The man heaved himself to his feet and walked with the children out of the tavern. Through the morning mist, he pointed out into the hills. "The Goblin Market is that way."

The children embraced the big man with the red beard, and then set out into the steep green hills behind the village. They walked away from the small seaside village, away from the sea, away from the tall green hill, and if their sense of direction deceived them not, far, far away from home.

CHAPTER SIX.

The Gray Valley Once upon a time, a boy named Jack, a girl named Jill, and a frog named Frog stumbled through high mountains and rocky valleys in a land very far away from the kingdom of Marchen. They were tired; they were hungry; they were thirsty; and they were sick to death of walking.

The sky was as gray as the loose stones that lay on the sides of the mountains, which was as gray as the sodden sod in the shallow valleys. The wind blew cold and wet, and would have been gray, too, if wind had a color.

At last, Jack, Jill, and the frog collapsed on their backs on a wide, smooth stone, and wondered if they were dead yet.

"So hungry," Jill moaned.

"So thirsty," Jack groaned.

"So worried," said the frog. "I hope we don't starve to death."

"Yes," said Jill, "not starving to death would be nice."

"So would not thirsting to death," said Jack.

"Thirsting isn't even a word," said Jill.

"It isn't?"

"No."

"Then what's the word?"

"I don't know. Dying of thirst."

"You can starve to death. Why can't you thirst to death?"

"I don't know. You just can't."

"Oh."

This is, of course, the kind of inane conversation that occurs when people are slowly losing their minds.

Through it, the frog was staring up at the sky, as he used to do when he lived in his well. For not the first time in that frog's long life, he was wishing he were back in it, salamanders and all. He could hear them now: "What is smelly?" "When is smelly?" "Why is smelly?" "Who is smelly?" "Am I smelly?" "Who's smellier, me or Fred? Is it me? It's me, right? Me?" He sort of missed them.

"Frog, I have a question," said Jack, who was now lying on his back, staring at the sky.

"Shoot."

"How do you talk?"

Jill looked over at Jack, and then at the frog. "Yeah," she said.

The frog sighed. He purposely did not look at Jill. "It's kind of a long story."

"Okay," said Jack.

"Okay," said Jill.

"Okay what?" said the frog.

"Okay, tell us the story," Jack answered.

The frog thought about it for a minute. He continued to purposely not look at Jill. And then, at last, he said, "All right..."

So the frog told them the story of how he came to talk. He started with the very smelly well, moved on to the very annoying salamanders, then described the princess with her ball, and so on, all the way through him trailing his froggy blood after him, all the way back to his well.

When he'd finished, Jack said. "That's a good story."

"Thank you," said the frog.

"My favorite part was when your leg got eaten by the weasel," Jack added.

The frog did not thank him again.

But Jill was silent. She stared into the great gray sky. After a long time, she said, "I think that was my mother."

The frog watched her. Jill said nothing more. But the frog could tell she was thinking. Thinking hard.

The frog glanced up. Three black specks had appeared through the heavy cloud. He watched them as the specks grew into dots, and the dots into blots, and the blots into splotches, and the splotches into birds, and the birds, at last, into ravens.

The frog catapulted himself out of Jack's pocket and dove for a dark crevice beneath a stone. Jack and Jill gazed at him like he was crazy. Then they heard the wings.

They looked up in time to see three black shapes fluttering down and landing on the stone beside them. The children stared. Three large and stately ravens shook their plumage and stood, dark and imperious, before them.

A vague sense of dread took hold of the children.

"What do you think they want?" Jack whispered.

"I know what they want," Jill whispered back. "They're scavengers. They're here to eat us after we die."

"What?" cried one of the ravens.

Jill toppled over backward.

Jack ducked as if something were about to strike him in the head.

"What did she just say we were going to do?" demanded another raven.

Jack's eyes were spread wide. Jill's head tilted wonderingly off to one side.

"They said we were going to eat their corpses," the third raven replied.

"That is the most repulsive thing I have heard in many, many years," declared the first.

"Did that raven just talk?" Jill hissed at Jack.

"I think they all did," he whispered back.

"Why are you whispering?" whispered the second raven. "We can hear, too, you know."

Jack and Jill silently wondered if they were hallucinating.

"Really, I'm not sure why you're so surprised," said the third raven. "You travel with a talking frog."